When the stock market does well, it becomes easier for life insurance companies to sell "permanent life" products that grow in value in step with general increases in the stock market. Unlike term life policies, which only pay when the insured person dies within a specified period, permanent life policies are not restricted to a specific period and accrue cash value.

Kiplinger's Personal Finance
These are confusing times for income investors. Not so long ago, they loved bonds, which presented them with three decades of falling yields and rising prices. Last year, they hated 'em, as the Federal Reserve's talk about...

Exactly two years ago, I wrote a column titled "Coping in a low interest world". At the time, short-term interest rates were essentially zero and the benchmark 10-year Treasury yield hovered at around 2.4 percent. Soon after, 10-year yields plunged to 40-...

When California voters approved $9 billion in funding for a bullet train in 2008, the ballot measure included the strictest engineering and spending controls ever placed on a major state project.
Voters were told that the high-speed trains would hit 220...

Kiplinger's Personal Finance
Wise investing requires selling your stocks at regular intervals to respond to changes in your life and your portfolio. Once you've sold your stocks, you'll need to reinvest the proceeds. We suggest some ideas below that will...

Fixed mortgage rates declined for the fifth straight week, with Freddie Mac reporting that lenders were offering 30-year home loans at an average of 4.12%, down from 4.14% a week earlier.
The average offering rate for a 15-year fixed loan fell to 3.21% from 3.25%, Freddie Mac said in its weekly report, released Thursday morning.
The rates were the lowest so far in 2014, defying the expectations of economists, who had expected the 30-year rate to rise to 5% this year.
Borrowers are benefiting from...

Stock prices are near all-time highs, but the real place to be this year is the bond market.
To the surprise of many on Wall Street, the long-underestimated fixed-income market is quietly outperforming its equity counterpart.
Many investors expected bonds to struggle this year as economic growth picked up and the Federal Reserve throttled back its long-running stimulus campaign.
Instead, bonds have rallied strongly amid jitters over the still-wobbly economy, the extended run in stock prices and...

Mortgage rates edged down a hair this week, hovering at the lowest level in six months, with Freddie Mac reporting that lenders were offering 30-year fixed home loans at an average of 4.2% compared to 4.21% a week earlier.
The average rate for a 15-year fixed loan dropped from 3.32% to 3.29%, according to Thursday’s Freddie Mac report.
The average initial rate fell from 3.05% to 3.01% on 30-year loans that become variable after five years at a fixed rate.
The latest report came amid a flurry...

After a recent past that can only be described as rocky, the Broward School Board wants voters to approve an $800 million bond referendum this November.
I'm going to withhold final judgment for now, but let me clue in superintendent Robert Runcie and board members the reflexive response I'm hearing in the real world:
Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha...Hell No!!!
So the school district has its work cut out. The district says it needs the money for repairs, renovations, reconstruction projects and technology. The...

Former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's memoir, "Stress Test," is being picked apart fairly intensively by the Washington and Wall Street press gangs, who are busily retailing the book's snarks and slights.
We're more interested in a nugget in which Geithner demonstrates that he didn't actually understand how Social Security works or its paramount importance to the way most Americans -- those who aren't rich bankers -- live. This is especially shocking because as Treasury secretary, Geithner served...

The prevailing governing philosophy of Baltimore County might well be summed up, with apologies to Henry David Thoreau, as "That government is best which governs least interestingly." As such, County Executive Kevin Kamenetz appeared to go to great lengths in his budget address to the County Council this morning to conceal the fact that he is proposing something quite significant. But there it is, toward the bottom of page eight, after a lengthy discussion of the merits of lowering the projected rate of...